(from Dayton, OH) I’m a bit disappointed by the small role that themes of civic renewal and citizen participation have played so far in the US presidential campaign. But recent developments in Britain are remarkably promising. If Thatcherite conservatism could migrate from the UK to the USA, maybe we can borrow their new civic orientation.
Thus consider these excerpts from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s recent speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations. …
America, you Jerusalem reborn!
No profligate, old-world, ruined people, you.
Behold: peace. You’re principle without pain and dishonor.
Dishonor and pain without principle: your peace.
Behold, you people: ruined world!
Old, profligate. No reborn Jerusalem you, America.
*Distantly inspired by Yehuda Alharizi’s “Palindrome for a Patron” [12th or 13th century] as translated by Peter Cole and cited by Harold Bloom in the June 28 New York Review of Books.
At CIRCLE, we’re working on two reports whose contents are embargoed, but both contain a lot of interesting new findings about Americans’ demand for civic participation and their engagement in relatively impressive forms of civic work:
On October 4th in Washington, the National Conference on Citizenship will release a major national poll. It helps to reveal how many and which Americans are currently involved in deliberation and public work.
On November 7th in Washington, CIRCLE will release the results of a major national study based on our interviews with 386 college students on 12 four-year colleges and universities. Like the NCoC study, but in different ways, it probes deliberation and attitudes toward politics and civil society.
Just a few recent items from my inbox that reflect that creativity of the movement for civic renewal:
1. Warrior to Citizen: The Center for Democracy & Citizenship at the University of Minnesota has formally launched its effort to help returning veterans reintegrate into civilian life. The emphasis is not on services, therapy, or sympathy. Instead, the Warrior to Citizen campaign recognizes that veterans have skills and knowledge that they can use for the benefit of American communities, if they are treated as assets. The coalition includes military and veterans’ organizations, higher education, mayors, and 250 priests, among others.
2. Resident Leaders: The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University is placing experienced undergraduates in dorms specifically to help first-year students engage in their communities. They join the traditional residential assistants (RAs) who help with academic and personal matters.
3. The Whole Child: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), which is a huge membership organization, has launched a campaign to fight the narrowing of the US curriculum and to defend arts, civics, service, and other crucial aspects of education that are at risk of disappearing from our schools.
On reading Twelfth Night recently, I was moved by the ending. Feste the Fool is left standing alone to sing of the cold winter, when the rain it raineth every day. Twelfth Night marks the end of Christmas, an interlude from work. This particular Christmas in Illyria also seems a break from the weather, for no one speaks of cold even though most of the action is outdoors. A willow cabin seems sufficient shelter. These are perhaps the “Halcyon days” of the winter solstice, what we would call an “Indian summer” (cf. 1 Henry VI, I,ii,131).
This Christmas is also a break from war and–most strikingly–from family. Orsino, Olivia, Viola, and Sebastian, the romantic leads, are all orphaned and childless. There is no mention of any family, either, for the minor characters of Sir Andrew Aguecheeck, Sir Toby Belch, Malvolio, Antonio, Maria, and the Fool. Since these characters have no parents or children, they have no one to govern them and no responsibilities. Virtually any of these people could be paired with anyone else. Even gender is no bar, for Viola is dressed as a man and attracts Olivia’s love. Illyria is like summer camp or freshman year at college. The characters are not wanton, but for them, everything is undecided.
The marriages of Olivia and Sebastian, Viola and Orsino represent a happy ending, but also the end of the interlude. After their weddings, Illyria will have a governing structure; families will be created in separate households. Immediately before everyone leaves the Fool alone on the stage, Orsino carelessly addresses his fiancée by the name she has used in her guise as a man:
Cesario, come–
For so you shall be while you are a man,
But when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen!
Orsino still sees Viola as “Cesario” and wants to postpone their marriage (and her transformation into a woman) until after the play ends. Maybe his slip of the tongue is homoerotic, but I think it is something else as well. Orsino wants to prolong the interlude, the time when he pines for a distant lover to the sound of “high fantastical” music, no one is attached to anyone, people drift freely from court to court, and you can do what you will. But the Fool is the most knowing character throughout the play, and once Orsino sweeps offstage with his retinue, the Fool sings of the winter that is adult life:
But when I came to man’s estate
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain
‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate
For the rain it raineth every day.